Seen, by Mahaya: A Tool to Sort the Mess of Social Media

A startup called Mahaya is trying to pull together all the most popular social media channels to give consumers, brands, and advertisers a one-stop view of the social media world. Popular Mechanics recently spoke with Tarikh Korula, CEO and cofounder of Mahaya, about the company and the upcoming release of its social media tool called Seen.

What is Mahaya?

Mahaya is the name of the company we founded, and the first commercial product we are building is called Seen. We've built an engine that aggregates, organizes, and ranks media. Mahaya specifically collects information on topics trending in social media and displays the results through Seen.

Why do we need another social media measurement and sharing tool?

When something like the Boston Marathon [bombing] happens, some of the first media seen coming out of the event is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Vine. Most users on the Web don't use those services, perhaps with the exception of Facebook. Most people aren't on Vine. They aren't on Instagram. Only 200 million of the 2 billion people on the Web are on Twitter.

Where do Mahaya and Seen fit in?

We compute the social headlines on the Web. Mahaya makes sense of an event, organizes it into topics, builds a timeline, and lets people very quickly see what happened. We provide more visibility, permanence, and search ability.

What can consumers expect to see with the Mahaya technology?

Consumers will be able to travel through space and time to see the world's stories. They'll get the best experience of what it's like to be somewhere. It may be a concert, a sporting event, or a breaking news event like a hurricane or a plane landing in the Hudson. They are going to come to us to see that story and experience it. If they are out of town when their son hits a home run at his little league baseball game or when their daughter sings at the school play, they will be able to view these events through Seen.

How is this different from sharing a video on Facebook?

If somebody remembers to post it on Facebook, and if they are following that person, then they can see it. But, what if it is posted on Twitter and they aren't on Twitter? Or, what if they are on Twitter but they aren't following the person that posted the video? Or, what if they aren't on Twitter at the time it is posted? They miss the story. We make it more permanent, more findable. With Seen, they can go back at any time and not only see the video but also the Facebook photos and Twitter posts that other people at the event posted.

How will the Mahaya technology affect businesses and brands?

For companies, we are going to let them understand more deeply what happened at an event through analytics, data services, and some demographics. For example, I can tell you who the most popular speaker was at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon over three days because we know who had the most social news during the event. We can also tell you what the most talked about topic was.

What benefits will advertisers see?

We did an event with Baratunde Thurston of Cultivated Wit on Twitter for Comedy Hack Day. It turned out that his whiskey sponsor for the event was the most popular trending topic. It's pretty cool to be able to go back to your sponsor and say, Hey, guess what? People talked about you the most at this event I ran with a hundred people showing up and thousands of people watching. Here are all the photos and all those people."

How did the idea behind Mahaya evolve?

Mahaya was spearheaded by my business partner, Mor Naaman, who was looking at various ways to slice and dice social media. He led a multiyear research project that was funded by the National Science Foundation, Amazon, Yahoo, Nokia and others. The research was performed at Rutgers with the help of professors from Columbia.

How have you been preparing for the launch of Seen?

We have about a dozen alpha users on the platform testing the software. Beta releases will be made open to larger and larger groups of folks over the next few months. We're also one of three companies selected to be incubated at the New York Times' TimeSpace.

When do you plan to release Seen?

Our plan is to launch the product formally after we are done with the New York Times project, which ends in August. We won't do a product release before that. So, I would imagine September will be the official public launch.